Employee engagement — the involvement and enthusiasm employees feel toward their work and workplace — is at a 10-year low, per a Gallup survey out today.

Why it matters: Workers had a rough 2024. Many of them felt stuck in jobs as hiring slowed, while others were forced back to the office full-time or felt a spun out by a lot of internal restructuring.

• Research shows that "when organizations have people with clear roles, who have people who care about them, who feel connected to the mission or purpose of the company, where their opinions count, they tend to produce more," said Jim Harter, chief scientist of workplace management at Gallup.

Zoom in: Gallup measures engagement by surveying full-time and part-time workers across 12 measures, including if they're satisfied with their workplace, know what's expected of them, and feel like they have the opportunity to "do what I do best every day."

The measures that saw the biggest drops versus survey data from before the pandemic in March 2020:

• Fewer employees said they clearly know what is expected of them at work, down 10 points from a high of 56%.
• Only 39% of workers feel strongly that someone cares about them as a person at work, down from 47%.
• Only 30% said that someone encourages their development, down from 36%.

Between the lines: The new data follows a separate report late last year, where Gallup identified a "Great Detachment" with more workers saying they're not satisfied at work and want a new job.

The big picture: Engagement had a good run, rising steadily after the 2008 recession as corporate management improved and leaders realized the importance of culture, Harter said.

• But the pandemic changed everything. Engagement has been falling since 2020 as everyone adjusted to a rapid series of changes in the workplace, from the rise of remote work, to a wave of resignations and hiring, and then a subsequent slowdown.
• "In the last two years or so, there's just been an overwhelming sort of lack of interest in things like employee engagement," said Massella Dukuly, head of workplace strategy at Charter, a future-of-work media and research company.
• The attitude seems to be that workers don't have anywhere else to go in this job market, she said.

💭 Emily's thought bubble: It seems more than coincidental that workplaces became more focused on good management and culture when interest rates were very low and they could afford such luxuries as making sure employees feel valued.

• Perhaps high worker engagement was another ZIRP phenomenon.

Beware the momentum trade. That's the big lesson from quantum computing stocks, which have imploded over the past three trading sessions.

Flashback: On the morning of Jan. 3, Axios Markets subscribers woke up to the news that "Quantum computing stocks are the new AI stocks."

Follow the money: Someone who invested $2,500 at the open that day in each of four hot stocks — IonQ, Rigetti, Quantum Computing and D-Wave Quantum — would have seen their initial $10,000 turn into $4,368 by the close of trading yesterday.

• That's a 56% decline in just over a week.

Driving the news: Much of the decline can be attributed to comments made by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang last Wednesday, in which he said that "very useful quantum computers" weren't going to be around for at least 15 years.

• Much of the rest, however, can simply be attributed to the natural volatility of small-cap meme stocks.

The big picture: When stocks go on a tear, small retail investors jump in, often buying zero-day options and other high-risk instruments, as they try to get rich quick.

• Often they try to trade the bursting of the bubble too, making bets that the stocks will fall.

The bottom line: Stock trading can be fun. But it's not for the faint of heart.

The average size of corporate spinoffs is growing, as CEOs look beyond hiving off unloved divisions and toward more complex, transformative deals.

Why it matters: Boards and C-suites at major companies are opting to tackle giant separations before an activist investor does it for them.

Zoom out: For years, spinoffs were mostly known for a parent company separating a division that did not fit with the core business. These were often seen as low-hanging fruit-type deals to prune a smaller or underperforming unit to boost value within the main company.

Zoom in: Before 2008, the average market value of a spinoff was around $1 billion. Today, that figure has grown to $2.5 billion, according to Trivariate Research, based on data compiled between 1999 and 2024.

Context: "In the U.S., the trend is companies doing larger separations that are more impactful rather than portfolio pruning," said Michael Kagan, a managing director at Morgan Stanley.

• Part of what's driving the trend now is CEOs having more confidence in business and macroeconomic soundness following years of pandemic-era volatility, he said.
• "CEOs are asking, 'Where does the company want to go for the next 10-plus years? What is the right strategy now that we are more stable?'" noted Kagan, who is the bank's global head of separations and structured solutions.

Between the lines: CEOs aren't the only ones eyeing separations. Over the last decade, activist investors have routinely arrived at the doorstep of companies saying the sum of the parts is more valuable than the combined entity.

Case in point: Elliott Management launched a campaign at Honeywell in November, demanding the $140 billion conglomerate consider breaking up.

• A month later, CEO Vimal Kapur said Honeywell was eyeing the spinoff of its aerospace division, a unit analysts say could be valued at $90 billion to $120 billion on its own, including debt.
• "Simplification is a huge theme, and boards are generally out ahead of it now in terms of knowing that activists are going to come in and say, 'You should break up," said Stephan Feldgoise, global co-head of M&A at Goldman Sachs.

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